


Fidelity

by greendragon_templar



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Each section begins with a letter, Feliks goes to live in the country and finds gay romance, Human AU, I subtly insert legal terms for fun, M/M, Trans Male Character, Vaguely Historical, Vaguely Jane Austen and also My Cousin Rachel inspired?, Vampires, insert 'i am half agony half hope' line here, melodramatic declarations of affection, oof, r e p r e s s i o n, this is so overblown its ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 09:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greendragon_templar/pseuds/greendragon_templar
Summary: Tolys is all old clothes and close-lipped smiles, niceties and duty and politeness. And it’s driving Feliks mad.





	Fidelity

**Author's Note:**

> HWD Secret Spectre Mod Event gift for Jules! I'm suffering.

_I never expected to take under my cousin’s will_ , Feliks’ letter begins. _But I’m having a marvellous time. I am fond of my new manservant especially. He is so kind. I don’t understand anything about the estate but he is showing me everything that I will need to know…_

Feliks pauses, tapping the end of his pen against his lower lip and slinging his free arm over the back of his chair. It’s his first letter since arriving at the house and he hopes his mother will appreciate his attempt at correspondence – mildly estranged as they are. He’s being exceptionally honest, at any rate; Tolys has been a godsend, so far managing every small affair, from arranging his wardrobe to ensuring he always has clean water with which to splash his face in the morning, to walking him through keeping the books, to explaining to him what a _residuary legatee_ is. It’s contributed to downplaying his anxiety significantly, and he couldn’t be more grateful if he tried.

After a further half an hour he’s completed and sealed the letter for delivery come morning, and with his left arm still hanging over the back of the chair he leans backward to properly survey the interior of the office. There’s something unsettling in the air, something militating against any kind of ‘lived-in’ feel and bestowing him with the strange sensation that he’s being watched. The estate itself feels archaic. He’d put it down to the dust and carpets and tapestries but for the fact he’s seen all these things before, in excellent upkeep, and never had to deal with the impression that he’s almost too _modern_ for the space.

But never mind. He’ll adjust, in time.

Feliks dresses for dinner and ventures to the dining room, but although the sun hasn’t set the curtains are all drawn tight. The only reason he can see where he’s going is that Tolys has distributed various kinds of candles liberally across every possible surface, every sideboard and mantelpiece, culminating in a virtual ball of fire in the centre of the dining table. Thin rays of sun beckon from beyond the curtain.

“Tolys?” he calls out, and Tolys emerges from a side hallway, as though spat out by the shadows.

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you open some of the curtains? This is kind of depressing,” he laughs. “Don’t you think? We’ve done this every night.”

The disconcerted expression  on the other end immediately punctures his mood, and he flinches at the reply. “Depressing?”

“Well, I like to see the sun sometimes. And it looks like you need it, too,” Feliks finishes, eyeing over his manservant, perpetually white as a sheet. In the moment, well-hidden even from the stash of candles he’s unearthed, he looks frankly _skeletal_. Tolys’ tone is altered again when he responds, softened now rather than hardened.

“I thought, perhaps, for atmosphere—”

“That’s the only reason? This isn’t a church.”

“What other reason would there be?”

“I don’t know,” Feliks admits, and drops his gaze. Tolys’ body language has transformed completely; Feliks is getting the impression he’s crossed some unseen threshold.

“Actually,” says Feliks, “I don’t mind. It’s fine.” If it sounds like an urgent interlocutory remedy, it’s because it is, and he wants to shrink away because of it.

“Thank you.” Tolys actually _sighs_ , and Feliks immediately looks at him again, bemused to see something like relief entering his expression (he’s glad to see it, too, actually; Tolys has looked sallow since Feliks’ arrival, like the victim of some ongoing illness, and Feliks has only restrained any further enquiries out of a desire to seem polite). If the curtains form the content of a delicate matter, he won’t probe it again; he much prefers Tolys’ gentleness to his scrutiny.

He eats his dinner with only candles for company, and he watches Tolys out of the corners of his eyes.

\--

_Sister,_

_I hope you’re taking care of everyone else in my absence. I miss you, and everyone else. It’s really cold here. But Tolys is helping me keep everything under management, and I don’t mind the winter so much. I might come home before the New Year, but I haven’t decided. I have so much to tell you. About Tolys, especially. He does some very odd things…_

Feliks finds himself rubbing his hands together between sentences, and he finishes the letter as quickly as he can, rushing back over to the wardrobe to draw out something made of fur, throwing it over his shoulders. One of few windows in the entire house is in his study, and he watches the snow fall as he returns to his desk, consuming the landscape without so much as a rustle, or breath of wind.

Outside the door, he hears Tolys busying himself in the hall; he’s always most proactive on dreary days and frequents cramped spaces more than he does open ones, as though searching for any means available to hide away. Tolys’ insistence on having Feliks attend the same bizarre eating ritual every evening has not showed any sign of abating; moreover, he always completes his work in a remarkably short span of time, and regularly, does it at night – though Feliks observes that Tolys still hasn’t ordered in the silver cutlery he requested a fortnight ago (he doesn’t like the look of the pewter).

When he eats – or drinks – is a complete mystery. So much time spent going between the kitchen and cellar, and Feliks hasn’t seen him sneak anything for himself, not once – he almost wishes that he would, not only because he wouldn’t mind, but because then it wouldn’t bother him so much when he’s alone or make Tolys seem like such a pillar of _virtue_.

Tolys is all old clothes and close-lipped smiles, niceties and duty and politeness. And it’s driving Feliks mad.

What began as an unwillingness to give offence or waste too much time on an ultimately unimportant issue, his patience with Tolys’ more esoteric characteristics, has begun to resemble something else. And Feliks doesn’t know where to begin navigating the problem, or whether it’s even a concern at all.

Tolys may look gaunt from a distance, but Feliks has come to the startling realisation that he’s really quite nice to look at – _more_ than nice, if he’s being honest with himself – and any kind of proximity does him endless favours. The colour of his eyes, the turn of his lips when he smiles, the motions and shape of his hands, even how he holds himself, are of far greater interest to Feliks than any of the services he continues to attend at the village church on Sundays. There’s always bags under his eyes, a kind of bored weariness that drapes over him when he’s performing any more monotonous task, but Feliks puts it down to overwork, or his strange sleeping pattern, and resolves to talk to him about it later. He feels like Tolys has been handling almost _everything_ since he came to the property; the least he can do is step in.

“Do you ever sleep?” he blurts out one day, biting his tongue a moment too late. “As in, I genuinely don’t think you do—”

Tolys, laden with crisply-folded blankets, gives Feliks a smile – little more than a flicker. “I do everything in good time.”

“I think you’re working too hard,” he replies, watching the movements in Tolys’ arms as he moves to hold his burden more comfortably. He turns his head aside, hair pulled back from his face, and Feliks begins to despise the unwelcome throb of his heart. “Don’t you agree?”

“Not at all. I’m very happy.”

“Are you?” It sounds so eager it’s almost _detrimental_.

“Yes, always.”

“Well, I’ve made up my mind, and I want you to take a break. A short one, because I don’t want to keep you, but won’t you play a game of chess with me?”

“A game?”

“I don’t have anyone else, you see—”

“Oh—” Feliks would almost say Tolys looks _guilty_. “Yes, anything you like.”

Feliks can’t help but gloat at the small victory, fleeting as it is, although he’ll later admit his mood takes a turn for the worse when he’s presently _thrashed_. He wouldn’t have known Tolys had it in him. With what he knows can’t be more than minutes of the chess game remaining, he finds himself demanding: “ _How_?”

“I wasn’t always your servant,” says Tolys, with a somewhat self-congratulatory quality. "I’ve played against a lot of people.’

“I _know_ you haven’t always been here, but _still_ —”

“I spent a lot of time travelling east. There, I learnt everything I know.”

“But this is ridiculous!”

“I could have adjusted my tactics, for your sake, if you had asked me.” Feliks doesn’t miss the alteration in Tolys’ tone, even his expression and posture, less frigid than normal. But he also rather likes it.

Feliks pours them both a drink, and they take on a second round of the game, then a third, then a fourth. Feliks is slaughtered each and every time. Tolys’ eyes are alight.

During the fourth game, something Feliks does – quite possibly a face he pulls, maybe even his ruddy cheeks – has Tolys laughing, and his teeth flash in the orange candlelight, like a coin in the snow.

Feliks stares, but keeps quiet. Tolys’ regular, unaffected expression resumes, and he’s perhaps a little grey in the face, but otherwise satisfied. His long fingers stroke the head of a pawn.

Feliks asks him for another game.

\--

_Thank you for your offer to allow me to stay with you over Christmas. Unfortunately, I have already made other arrangements and so have no need to impose on your hospitality. I send my family’s regards…_

Despite its untruthfulness – more than half a lie, in fact– Feliks doesn’t feel even slightly remorseful. After stretching, he signs his name off with the usual flourish and leaves the letter in an unclasped wooden box on the edge of his desk (Tolys’ suggestion, upon realising Feliks was too nervous to ask him personally to deliver every single one. The box, as their intermediary, works much better).

He’d rather spend the holidays here, where he has only two people on his mind.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the house remains the fact that aside from Tolys and the various other itinerant staff, he doesn’t have to concern himself at all with being seen or heard in his own space, set completely apart from familiar gazes and familiar presences. Tolys is more inclined to compliment him on the dresses he brought from home at any given opportunity than to divert his eyes, and his nonchalance flitters close on the brink of completely perplexing Feliks. When everything he owns is put away in the wardrobe, Tolys packs each item in the same way. To him, perhaps they are not merely remnants of someone else’s inconsequential past.

There have been other small changes to the environment, too, to the point where Feliks wonders if he’s somehow come to the end of one metaphorical path and embarked upon another. The basis for his feeling stems entirely from how Tolys behaves. His unusual sleeping pattern and work schedule are unbroken, yet, his disposition isn’t. He’s clearly taking more time out of his evenings to keep Feliks company than he used to; they carry on half-decent conversations in the study; they play chess on Saturdays, and Tolys shows him the library with far greater depth, picking out his favourite novels for Feliks to look at ( _ancient_ novels, all of them). Feliks swears Tolys is laughing more, if only when his back’s turned, and the sound is ever present in his thoughts.

It’s on his mind at breakfast the next morning, in a dark room under the shadows of an overcast sky, a week and a half until Christmas, and he turns to find Tolys hovering patiently behind his chair.

“A package arrived for you.”

 _The cutlery?_ is Feliks’ first instinctual response, but he’s since decided he’d rather not cross-examine Tolys over it; Tolys has attended faultlessly to every other of his requests in the last couple of months, and it wouldn’t do to dredge it back up again.

“I didn’t order anything, Tolys.”

“Oh? It’s in your bedroom when you want it.”

Feliks finishes his meal twice as quickly as usual and hurries back to the bedroom, where something vaguely rectangular and concealed by brown paper rests on the quilt. Tolys is gone. Feliks picks at the paper uneasily for a few minutes, like it’s an unsavoury scrap of food, before all at once ripping it to shreds.

His arms are swathed in what could be mistaken for mourning wear, when he pulls them back from the package; half a dozen garments, pretty as night and twice as cool. Laying them out on the covers, his hands linger over the velvets and laces, trimming and adorning jackets and petticoats. Reaching for the nearest, more reverent than in the cathedrals, he moves over to the dressing table in the corner with its mirror resting against the wall. His hair stands out vividly against the sullen depth of the colours.

Something touches his shoulder; he yelps, spinning around in an instant.

“Tolys! But you weren’t—you weren’t—”

“Weren’t what?”

“Where the hell did you come from? I didn’t see you in the mirror.”

“I just came in. Sorry if I startled you.”

“Do you even breathe?” Feliks exclaims, but the bulk of his attention’s on the material clenched in his hands. “Where did these—?”

“They’re mine. Well, not in a strict sense. They belong to the estate. I found them in one of the bedrooms and I figured that you’d make use of them,” he says, mild. Feliks re-examines the clothes he left strewn on the covers of his bed and begins to understand what he found so unsettling. Nobody’s worn anything like this in _decades_.

Feliks turns to Tolys rather than the mirror, and the latter glances over Feliks’ shoulder, brow furrowed.

His eyes dart back to Feliks. “Are you happy?”

“Of course I am, of course I’m happy. I just, I just don’t know what to make of this at _all_. How are these in such good condition? And how did you get them? They’re too beautiful to wear only in the house, but you wouldn’t dare wear them outside; you’d be laughed at.”

“The present has no greater merit than the past,” says Tolys, looking from the curtained window to the bed to Feliks, rather fondly. “With limited exceptions.”

“You dug these out for me?”

“I hardly walked to hell and back. There’s more there, if you look. Jewellery. It’s all yours.”

Tolys acts as if to cement his point, pulling out a drawstring bag from the recesses of the package and fishing out a jewel-encrusted ring.

“May I?”

“Huh? Yes, yes…”

Tolys handles Feliks’ palm like glass, slipping the ring over the fourth finger of Feliks’ left hand. He doesn’t bother to think about whether it’s intentional; he doesn’t think his body or brain are operating at all for the entire event.

He would not have known if the world had ceased to turn.

\--

_I don’t know my state of mind anymore. I don’t know if I’m living or dying._

Feliks’ diary has collapsed into a morbid monologue, or so he tells himself each time he finishes writing an entry and is subsequently staring at it with regret in the aftermath. But if this is madness, then it isn’t nearly so bad as he assumed.

The snow thickens, winter plunges its fingers knuckles-deep into their side of the world, and for a few short, dim days, Feliks’ primary duty turns to preparing gifts for the servants, to be parcelled out on Christmas Eve. Tolys, smiling, gave him some ideas not too long ago, and the task is nearly complete. But he hasn’t forgotten about Tolys himself.

Feliks manages to procure a pair of warm gloves from the nearby village – a necessity, he feels, given how Tolys’ skin always feels whenever they brush past one another in the halls – and wraps it up alongside some additional spending money. He tries on the gloves before he packages them to ensure they’re exactly what he hoped, and is delighted with the result, clapping his hands together once for effect.

It’s the early hours of the morning and Feliks is at his study toward the front of the house, yawning but pleased, preparing to pull the gloves off his hands again, when he sees a dark shape scurry out across the lawn and down toward the road. It’s too black outside and his eyesight is too poor to spot anything distinguishable about the silhouette, but there’s no good reason for anybody to be venturing out at this hour.

Absentmindedly pulling a coat from his wardrobe, leaving the gloves on, he follows. On reflection later, he’ll find no sense in the action, but there’s no other option present in his brain at the time. He could’ve stayed indoors; he could’ve been warm and ignorant as ever. Instead, the house propelled him toward some other eventuality.

Thoughtlessly, he doesn’t think to grab a lamp on his way out, but the figure ahead of him had superior foresight to his own, so he can follow according to the golden will-o-the-wisp dancing ahead.

He knows the road relatively well, but that doesn’t stop it from being uneven, and he’s turned one of his ankles at least twice before he and the figure ahead have entered onto the outskirts of the village where Feliks acquired the gloves. Feliks pauses by the roadside to hold back a sneeze, quiet as possible, and he loses all sight of the person who had so determinedly marched ahead of him.

Feliks’ teeth are chattering and he has half the mind to turn around and go back, leaving whatever mystery this happens to suggest to some other, more forgiving season, but he senses, too, that he’s being hauled toward some sort of _conclusion_ , some great unravelling beyond his control, that the figure who he followed has intended something like this all along. But then why was he left behind? His head aches; he can’t feel his ears. He doesn’t have the luxury of loitering around until he conceives of some preferable path to the one that has opened up in front of him. Gloved hands on his elbows, he wanders into the village.

In less than ten minutes he’s quite sure that he wants to go back; this isn’t how he remembers this place _at all_. Nothing is the same after dark. None of its usual character is present; it’s like the reverse side of a coin, the wrong side of the fence. The village has never looked so _dead_ , never seemed so utterly void of life or activity as it does at this odd hour. Without putting an awful lot of thought into it he strides up and down a few of the streets, surreptitiously peering into covered windows, disturbed by the lifeless feel, as if everyone has retreated and abandoned their livelihoods.

Around another corner, Feliks finally spots something that stands out from the repetitive layout of the streets and homes – an awkwardly crouched mass near someone’s front gate, as though it has been felled there, slain. He knows his own servant well enough by now; he doesn’t have to get close to recognise his shadow, but in a sudden rushing panic, he runs toward the figure regardless.

“Tolys! Tolys, are you alright? I—”

He thinks he’s being sucked into the bowels of the earth when Tolys’ eyes lock on him. There’s a glossy substance coating his lower jaw; the lamp is gone, cast aside, but Feliks doesn’t need the sun to know that it’s blood.

“No, wait!” Elongated fangs glisten when Tolys opens his mouth.

 _Tolys_ , Feliks mouths again under his breath. His face contorts again at the sight of a second figure, slumped at Tolys’ right hand side, largely concealed under protective layers of fabric. The eyes are closed; any other situation, any other place, and Feliks would be forgiven for believing she was asleep.

Tolys shoves one hand against the unconscious figure’s neck, the other covering his own mouth; he’s never looked more afraid.

“Tolys.” Feliks stumbles. Faint, dumbstruck, numb, he’s forgetting how to breathe, forgetting how to articulate anything of use to either of them. “Tolys,” he gasps, “you killed someone. Christ, Tolys—!” His voice is ragged, then shrill, and Tolys’ eyes have widened.

“I didn’t! She’s unconscious, see, I would never—”

“What the fuck have you done? How—what in God’s name _are_ you?!”

“No, no, please, I’m doing this because I don’t have a choice.”

“You’re a murderer! The blood, the blood—”

“She isn’t dead!”

“And how would I know that? Can you prove it?”

“Feliks!” Tolys cries out, and Feliks goes still, deprived of every other accusation he had to offer; Tolys has never said his name before. “Listen to me. Calm down and listen to me, please. Please.” He tries, vainly, to use the back of his bare hand to smear away the blood, a near pitiful display. Feliks feels the first hint of shame as he watches.

“Here,” he says, offering Tolys a handkerchief from the depths of his coat. Tolys accepts it after a moment, without meeting Feliks’ eyes, restoring himself to respectability as he drags it over his chin. He makes a motion as if to return it but changes his mind.

“Feliks, it was never in my design to bring you harm. I would never have chosen to bring you into this or to have you know anything if I could help it.”

“I don’t care what you planned for me!” he lies. “The evidence is right there; you’re covered in _blood!”_

“She’s still alive!” Tolys retorts, but with Feliks towering above him, he almost looks like he’s cowering.

“How can I believe that? How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“When I have ever lied to you?”

“You’ve been lying this entire time!” Tolys winces, rising gradually and shakily to his feet to look at Feliks properly.

“It was entirely necessary. How would you have reacted if I told you the truth when you arrived? You would have packed your bags, returned home and sent a man with a cross and a stake after me for good measure!”

“And what about all this?” Feliks asks, almost spitting it out, trembling. “What about her? Is this what you do every night?”

“I only feed when I have to,” Tolys replies, now with the benign tone of a person explaining how often they can afford to buy meat. “This doesn’t usually happen, ever. I promise. I couldn’t help myself. I was starving. I don’t know why; I couldn’t tell you with any kind of real honesty. Usually, see, I only feed when people are asleep, and infrequently—”

“You just raid the village whenever you feel like it? You drink people’s blood when they’re _asleep_?”

 “They never feel it! I’m fast. You get quite good at something when you have to do it several times a week for over a hundred years,” Tolys says. “And like I said earlier, it was never my design to come after you. Never, I promise—”

“What difference is it, in the end?” Feliks’ voice mounts in volume again, but its steadiness rapidly deteriorates. “I didn’t even know that you _existed_. Are there other vampires? Other people like you?”

“Well, yes! Yes, there are. I can’t help that.”

“And now suddenly I find you, in the middle of nowhere, and in the middle of the night, drinking your fill, _terrorising_ these people—"

“Is that all I am, now?” Tolys replies, stretching the fabric of Feliks’ handkerchief in his hands, reddening his broken fingernails. “I understand how it all might seem, that the impression I’ve made is unlike what I intended, but Feliks, Feliks, this isn’t it. I’m the same as before. Haven’t I been good to you?”

In that instant, Tolys doesn’t even remotely resemble the blood-smeared spectre Feliks stumbled upon only a few minutes before; he’s the pale servant with the indefatigable nature and tired, but undefeated resolve. He responds accordingly to what he sees. “You’ve always been really kind to me. The clothes, too.”

“I am not malicious, to you or to her. Do you think I’m doing any of this because I enjoy it? I have better things to do than provoke nightmares. My priorities are the estate, _and_ you.”

Feliks’ spirit deflates. There is nothing to contradict.

“So how old are you?” says Feliks, surprised by his own placidity, now, echoed in the banal inquiry.

“One hundred and eighty-six.”

“How did this happen?”

“I killed myself, and nobody put a stake through my chest or knocked out my teeth.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Feliks, it’s alright. If eternity’s a punishment, it hasn’t been awful."

Fresh snowfall against the top of Feliks’ head startles him out of his vaguely sluggish state of mind, and he’s reminded afresh of Tolys’ victim, the stains on her neck, sprawled on the icy ground. “We can’t stay here and neither should she. I’m sorry, but I should really tell someone about her. I know I should. About what’s happened, about what you did—"

“Please, don’t,” Tolys says, and Feliks acknowledges that he _couldn’t_. Not in good faith. Not willingly. He knows too much of Tolys to throw doubt on his judgment. Despite his disgust, his _horror_ , his prior feelings are unchanged. He’s in no hurry to repudiate their relationship, or backpedal on anything he has made known either to Tolys or to himself.

“And you would never have come after me?”

“No.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. Why do these people deserve it any more than I do?”

“It isn’t a question of ‘deserving’, but of duty. Fidelity. That’s the end of the matter. You were never my aim.”

Feliks glances away. “I almost wish that I were.”

“Do you?” Tolys cracks another smile, and Feliks no longer has any doubt about what he’s seeing behind his lips.

“I brought you a gift,” he says, glancing up from his hands.

“Did you?”

“Yes, though now I’m starting to regret it.”

Tolys offers a sympathetic look. “I hope one day you’ll understand.”

“I don’t have to understand everything,” responds Feliks, and there can be no overcoming the fact that there still lies a body beside them, as yet unaddressed throughout all the mayhem, but Tolys is so reasonable, so painfully _reasonable_ , that any further protestation seems cruel. “I know now that I don’t know you as well as I thought I did,” Feliks says, and at Tolys’ despondency, goes on: “But I don’t need to know you perfectly to know that I still want to be with you. I think we are more alike than you realise."

“Thank you, Feliks.”

“But I want us to think more about this. About the blood, about who you’re going after. I want us to work something else out. And you’re going to clean her up,” Feliks says, gesturing to the unconscious body between them, “and take her indoors.”

“I promise.”

“Then nobody will find out what happened here. And, before I forget again, I got these gloves for you,” says Feliks, quick, and begins tugging at the wool over his hands, but Tolys reaches across to press Feliks’ hands between his own.

“No. You need them far more than I do.”

Tolys bows his head, and Feliks temporarily abandons restraint to bring their foreheads together. He hopes beyond all hope that Tolys can make sense of everything so far, that their relationship is not irreparable, even in light of the absurd circumstances.

“Tolys, you stink of blood.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know.” Feliks notices a single, drying trail of gore down Tolys’ waistcoat, and pulls back.

“Feliks, I am truly sorry.” It leaves Tolys’ mouth as a choked, unhappy admission, as though transmitted at his own execution.

Wordlessly, Feliks removes his gloves to place them over Tolys’ hands, revealing the ring still on his left hand, and Tolys smiles.

\--

Sometimes, the written word is an easier tool to convey both truth and affection. Feliks writes down what he cannot express aloud.

_Tolys,_

_I want you to stay here. I want you to stay with me. Will you? Give me your answer as soon as you are able._

Not a day later, Tolys leaves his reply in the wooden box on Feliks’ desk.

_I will._


End file.
